I'm going to start by saying this post isn't meant to be grim, it's ment to raise awareness.
As for nearly every MMORPG in the past devs have made changes to their successful games which ultimately bred their own destruction.
This post is here to point out mistakes that have been made in prior MMO's (I hope other people contribute their experience.) to help increase the duration, and success that most of us wish for Pantheon.
For me Everquest was one of the best games ever until the Luclin expansion came out. That's when travel became too easy, and the lore really just took a turn for the worst. They redeemed themselves slightly with some of the Planes of Power content, but ultimately it all felt very forced. Instead of expanding on the world that was already built they added Luclin and all of it's connecting zones, and Plane of Knowledge and all of it's connecting zones. (The same could be said of Kunark & Velious, however their existence in Norrath felt natural.) The point I'm trying to get to is the things that killed it for me was the introduction of fast travel, mounts, and the far reach ideas for expansions. By the way as a side note Velious was probably the best expansion ever.
As for World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, they were simply too easy and straight forward. Ultimately the "Go here" function killed it for me. Not to mention it turned my stomach when I heard they were giving away levels and gear.
As for Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. Too many resources were wasted on nonsense and space combat might as well have been absent.
As for Runes of Magic, they added a patch and their idea of adding content was making different difficulties to the same dungeons. I have no problem running the same dungeon a thousand times for gear, I do however have a huge problem running the same dungeon 3 thounsand times when it's forced upon me.
As for Archage, they ninja'd in a cash shop, and gear upgrading system that was so bad that it was no longer a game it was a form of gambling. (I'm okay with spending some money on a game as a way to support the games progression, but not to the point where I'm competively gambling.)
As for Guildwars 2, There was nothing unique about the classes and you were confined to a "best build" type of scenerio, pretty much forcing everyone in to cookie cutter builds.
As for balancing in any game I have a firm belief that no one should ever be nerfed ever. If anything future expansions should compensate by bumping up other classes and mob difficulty. It's just not a cool move to give someone something only to take it away.
These are just a few examples of where things went wrong in other games and I hope other people add their experiences.
The most important thing I can say is remember what your building and stay true to it always. When you start to venture away from it, or make false promises, that's when the back bone of the community will go with it.
Long Live Pantheon!
Interesting post. I am going to challenge you on the Luclin comment about travel becomming too easy. How so exactly? The only additional travel mechanic were the Spire platforms that transported a player to the moon every 15 min and the additional zone ports for Druids and Wizards. Hardly game breaking IMHO.
I will concede that the Luclin lore was a bit wonky at the time and out of place. Moon cats are cool now but back then.. meh. Now there is an exception. Ssraeshza Temple. That place will forever hold a specal place in hell err in my heart. :) I didn't see the sun much in summer of 2002 as I was farming shards and raiding in that damn zone lol. Seriously though, I get the old school MMO feels just thinking about that place.
<3
Well you could take a spire to the moon and then back down to another zone which made it fairly easy to get around, the timers may have been set to 15 minutes but no one ever really had to wait that long. Not to mention that's around the time mounts were added as well. I can tell you as a Wizard it robbed me of one of the major benefits of my class. I feel like Ports and Speed buffs were more than enough to traverse the world. Sure if may have taken a little while to get there and it may have been dangerous but it demanded a certain amount of respect from the world, and allowed you to be more immersed in it.
WoW is far from dead. And though they may have made some disagreeable design decisions according to their base crowd, they've stuck with roughly the same design concepts from the beginning.
If a game did something that "killed it for you" then it might be something someone else enjoys.
Pantheon isn't even out, none of us know what it's going to be like when it's live.
Once it is live, do the Devs fold to the cries of the masses, or stick with what they're trying to do? Do they concede a single server game with a loyal base subscription of 2000 people, or do they make the "killed it" changes hoping to keep/gain more subs?
Maybe games die because they don't change, maybe they die because they change too much.
With Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen time will tell.
I think when they intriduced Dungeons of Norrath (with the auto-created connected-puzzle dungeon instances and specialized dungeon currency, the downward spiral started. The Dragons of Norrath made this dungeon currency issues laughably bad.
I loved Luclin. I am against instant travel. I don't feel like the spires hurt a thing becuase there was a long waiting delay. Just like a boat.
I loved the original Luclin bazaar and the revamped one was the worst thing ever (made as I understand it, specifically because they couldn't render so many player models simultaneously in one viewable room at a time.)
I got the sense that PoP was supposed to be the end game, with beating Time as the ultimate ll-ending accomplishment. But players kept wanting more and I htink some of the expansions where very good and some were terrible and felt weak and forced.
Generally, however, I think the original game, Kunark and Velious were the best. I think when they started messing with that formula and changing the way to interact with the worl, it started to erode the quality of the experience:
- in game maps
- instant travel
- instanced zones and instanced raids
- offline player auctions
- micro transactions
- pay to win
- no more medding
- no corpse runs
etc
All these things were done in response to a fear that they are losing players who clamour for easier/faster/convenience/QOL things but all these did was water the game experience down and speed up the spiral.
I appreciate the sentiment but we have had a lot of these posts already and they typically all end the same way, with arguing over opinions. Since these are development forums and not your typical game forums, I will have to close this as this type of discussion doesn't help the overall development of the game.
Our developers are aware of other games success and failures as many have been a part of them and gained valuable experience, so it is best to leave it with the team and see how they implement things in Pantheon.